Knowledge Reconsidered: A Feminist Overview

Janet Money is a writer and policy analyst for the Canadian Cystic
Fibrosis Foundation in Toronto.

Knowledge Reconsidered is a collection of papers from the Seventh Annual General Meeting and Conference of the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women.

For those previously unaware of feminist research or the CRIAW, the volume offers an interesting introduction to both. For those already in the know, the papers serve as a state-of-the-art message for Canadian feminist research.

The volume opens with Dorothy E. Smith’s “The Renaissance of Women,” which explains how women’s horizons narrowed as men’s expanded and how the current renaissance of women has depended on the development of discourse among women. The papers that follow serve to illustrate her latter theme, discussing ethics, literary criticism, Canadian history, anthropology and sociology, technology, and, in a concluding paper, how feminist knowledge can be communicated through education to create a new society.

Several of the essays raise the question of whether a feminist approach to a discipline must remain separate from the mainstream approach forever. Conclusions vary, but most agree it is too soon to lay down the weapons of feminist research.

Each paper but the last is accompanied by a précis in French. The concluding paper is presented in its original French, with a complete English translation. All contain footnotes, and Andrea Lebowitz’s provocative essay on feminist literary criticism also includes a bibliography.

These references are a particular boon to the newcomer to feminist research and enhance the value of an already significant work.